It’s Monday and it’s the perfect day to start a routine. You may have not thought about it, but routines make life easier. It optimizes your productivity and makes you work efficiently. You will be more in control of your day and be able to get the important things done first. It simplifies your personal and work life so you can avoid chaos and mayhem (sometimes, that could even be an understatement, lol).

Create a list of your daily and weekly tasks and identify which ones are similar so you can batch process them. From there, you can start planning your routine and set them at the most practical time of the day or day of the week.

Set a day for errands like laundry, grocery shopping and paying bills and then set a time in a day for exercise, meditation and pet walking. Create a ‘desk time’ where you’ll be doing most of your regular daily tasks like checking your mail, reviewing your calendar for your appointments and other things that may come up. Save a good chunk of the day to complete most of your urgent tasks or projects.

When you think you have listed down all the important details of this new routine you’re creating, then next things to do are to try it out, tweak to your liking and stick with it. To help you with that last (and most difficult part), you can post a copy up on the wall at home or your fridge, or save it as a sticky note on your laptop. You can also add calendar entries via your smartphone to remind you of what you’re scheduled to do. Then finally, give yourself a reward when you successfully complete it for 30 days.

Some would say living in a routine makes your life dull. We say: Make it work for you. It doesn’t have to consume your whole day or define your whole life, but it should be enough to maximize productivity, simplify tasks and use time wisely so you can have more to spend with friends and family.